Truck renting group seeks ELD exemption for all of 2018

The Truck Renting and Leasing Association has been granted a 90-day exemption through April 19 from the ELD mandate. It has also announced it has filed a petition for an exemption to last through the end of the year.

TRALA announced in December the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration would grant the extension of compliance, and the agency published the notice in the Federal Register last week. The extension applies to short-term rental trucks, defined as 30 days or less.

According to TRALA, inspectors have been unaware since the ELD mandate went into effect on Dec. 18 of the waiver for rental trucks, creating confusion for some TRALA members.

In order to meet the requirements for the waiver, carriers that are found to have replaced a 30-day rental with another would be in violation of the waiver. Carriers must also have a “Satisfactory” rating to use the waiver.

Following the publication of the waiver in the Federal Register, TRALA announced it filed another petition with FMCSA for an exemption from the ELD mandate through the end of year due to compliance complexities for truck rental companies.

The group says by filing now, it gives FMCSA time to publish the petition in the Federal Register an open it for public comments. TRALA says the exemption would give rental and leasing companies more time to “develop compliance strategies for dealing with the unique issues relating to the use of ELDs in short-term rental vehicles.”

The difficulty, TRALA says, stems from a lack of interoperability between ELD platforms, causing rental trucks to offer ELD compliance options for a variety of platforms based on each customer’s need.